John Tuite

John Tuite, the embattled administrator of the Community Redevelopment Agency, says he was willing to work the remaining two years of his current contract, but the CRA board bought him out. The severance package includes salary, back pay, pension and other benefits. It totaled more than $765,000 in public funds. Tuite is legally entitled to the money, but this extraordinary buyout at taxpayers' expense doesn't exactly inspire public confidence--and it raises many troubling questions.

Strong opposition has erupted to the $765,325 severance package approved for John Tuite, departing director of the Community Redevelopment Agency, and some City Hall officials were predicting this week that the huge payout will provoke the Los Angeles City Council to take over the agency. The deal, approved Friday by the CRA board, has prompted unusually harsh denunciations in city politics.

In the end, both critics and supporters said Friday, departing Community Redevelopment chief John Tuite was a victim of changing times which demanded social responses to urban decay and poverty--not the grandiose skyscrapers and public squares that marked his tenure. The CRA, under Tuite, gave a badly needed shot in the arm to Chinatown, helped fund the tallest skyscraper on the West Coast and belatedly began a major push to create affordable housing in a city desperate for inexpensive rentals.

John Tuite, the embattled administrator of the powerful Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency, said Friday that he will resign from his $147,000-a-year job in exchange for a mammoth $765,375 wages and benefits package--believed to be the largest such settlement in the city's history. The complex deal, which ends weeks of speculation over Tuite's future, was pieced together during two weeks of negotiations involving the CRA board and Mayor Tom Bradley's office.

December 26, 1990 | DAVID FERRELL and JANE FRITSCH, TIMES STAFF WRITERS

To some he appears arrogant: slicked-back hair, a cool gaze, a smile that sometimes becomes a smirk. On top of that, Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Mark D. Fabiani combines youth--he is 33--with brass. The No. 2 man in Tom Bradley's Administration is a Harvard Law School graduate who has forged a reputation at City Hall as an achiever and hard-nosed political infighter. Admirers regard him as a "Boy Wonder"--the "smartest person in the building," according to one staff member.

Mayor Tom Bradley is negotiating to force the resignation of John Tuite, the controversial head of the Community Redevelopment Agency, the city's powerful urban renewal agency credited with stimulating $7 billion in development, City Hall sources said Thursday. Tuite, who has headed the agency for 4 1/2 years, has had a stormy relationship with the Los Angeles City Council and is viewed by some as out of step with the Bradley Administration's new emphasis on affordable housing.

John Tuite, executive director of the Community Redevelopment Agency, did not misuse public funds in hiring two public relations consultants, but his agency failed to follow proper procedures in awarding the contracts, a city review has concluded. "In our opinion, allegations that the administrator contracted with public relations consultants for personal gain are unfounded," City Administrative Officer Keith Comrie wrote in a report Wednesday to Mayor Tom Bradley.

An investigation into the alleged mishandling of two public relations contracts by Community Redevelopment Agency Executive Director John Tuite has turned up no evidence that he rigged bids or falsified documents, officials announced Thursday. However, the probe by the CRA Board of Commissioners determined that Tuite used authority he had been given in ways the board had not intended, and it ordered a review of agency practices involving contracts for less than $25,000.

At Mayor Tom Bradley's request, city officials are exploring allegations that John Tuite, executive director of the Community Redevelopment Agency, mishandled two public relations contracts, it was learned Wednesday. A question of bid-rigging has been raised in connection with one contract, officials said, adding that they also are attempting to determine whether Tuite paid a consultant public funds to promote his own image and that of his family.

The Community Redevelopment Agency averted a showdown with the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday by agreeing to present a compensation and benefit package for CRA chief John Tuite to a council panel for review. The council had been scheduled to consider ordering the CRA to abstain from acting on Tuite's pay until the city lawmakers could review the proposal.